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In a wide-ranging study based on legal history, political theory, and philosophical ideas going all the way back to Plato and Roman law, Robert Clinton challenges current faith in an activist judiciary. Claiming that a human-centered Constitution leads to government by reductive moral theory and illegitimate judicial review, he advocates a return to traditional jurisprudence and a God-centered Constitution grounded in English common law and its precedents.
Federal judges, legal scholars, pundits, and reporters frequently describe the Supreme Court as the final word on the meaning of the Constitution. The historical record presents an entirely different picture. A close and revealing reading of that record, from 1789 to the present day, Reconsidering Judicial Finality reminds us of the “unalterable fact,” as Chief Justice Rehnquist once remarked, “that our judicial system, like the human beings who administer it, is fallible.” And a Court inevitably prone to miscalculation and error, as this book clearly demonstrates, cannot have the incontrovertible last word on constitutional questions. In this deeply researched, sharply reasoned work...
"Franck's reexamination of the place of natural law in the early Supreme Court is fresh, illuminating, and long overdue. His scholarship is incisive and profound; and the exegeses of early Supreme Court opinions are often brilliant". -- Robert L. Clinton, author of Marbury v. Madison and Judicial Review.
Arguments over constitutional interpretation increasingly highlight the full range of political, moral, and cultural fault lines in American society. Yet all the contending parties claim fealty to the Constitution. This volume brings together some of America's leading scholars of constitutional orginalism to reflect on the nature and significance of various approaches to constitutional interpretation and controversies. Throughout the book, the contributors highlight the moral and political dimensions of constitutional interpretation. In doing so, they bring constitutional interpretation and its attendant disputes down from the clouds, showing their relationship to the concerns of the citizen. In addition to matters of interpretation, the book deals with the proper role of the judiciary in a free society, the relationship of law to politics, and the relationship of constitutional originalism to the deepest concerns of political thought and philosophy. Book jacket.
Argues that legislatures are necessary for securing human rights, and opposes theories that locate that responsibility primarily with courts.
A stunning revision of our founding document’s evolving history that forces us to confront anew the question that animated the founders so long ago: What is our Constitution? Americans widely believe that the United States Constitution was created when it was drafted in 1787 and ratified in 1788. But in a shrewd rereading of the Founding era, Jonathan Gienapp upends this long-held assumption, recovering the unknown story of American constitutional creation in the decade after its adoption—a story with explosive implications for current debates over constitutional originalism and interpretation. When the Constitution first appeared, it was shrouded in uncertainty. Not only was its meaning...
John Marshall (1755--1835) was arguably the most important judicial figure in American history. As the fourth chief justice of the United States Supreme Court, serving from 1801 to1835, he helped move the Court from the fringes of power to the epicenter of constitutional government. His great opinions in cases like Marbury v. Madison and McCulloch v. Maryland are still part of the working discourse of constitutional law in America. Drawing on a new and definitive edition of Marshall's papers, R. Kent Newmyer combines engaging narrative with new historiographical insights in a fresh interpretation of John Marshall's life in the law. More than the summation of Marshall's legal and institutional accomplishments, Newmyer's impressive study captures the nuanced texture of the justice's reasoning, the complexity of his mature jurisprudence, and the affinities and tensions between his system of law and the transformative age in which he lived. It substantiates Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr.'s view of Marshall as the most representative figure in American law.
Can the Supreme Court be free of politics? Do we want it to be? Normative constitutional theory has long concerned itself with the legitimate scope and limits of judicial review. Too often, theorists seek to resolve that issue by eliminating politics from constitutional decisionmaking. In contrast, Terri Peretti argues for an openly political role for the Supreme Court. Peretti asserts that politically motivated constitutional decisionmaking is not only inevitable, it is legitimate and desirable as well. When Supreme Court justices decide in accordance with their ideological values, or consider the likely political reaction to the Court's decisions, a number of benefits result. The Court's p...
Winner of the 2010 Book Award from the New England Historical Association American constitutionalism represents this country’s greatest gift to human freedom, yet its story remains largely untold. For over two hundred years, its ideals, ideas, and institutions influenced different peoples in different lands at different times. American constitutionalism and the revolutionary republican documents on which it is based affected countless countries by helping them develop their own constitutional democracies. Western constitutionalism—of which America was a part along with Britain and France—reached a major turning point in global history in 1989, when the forces of democracy exceeded the ...